The barrel of the nineteen leven cold
Never have my lips touched stainless nickel
My mind was made and my cryptic thoughts sold
I pressed so hard blood began to trickle
My mind was in a world all too alone
My heart felt break from this evening of late
Had she known 'twas left here all aching bones
That I was left to my dishearten fate
Isolated I'd been this night of eve
This life had nothing left for me to see
Leave me so my broken heart can grieve
To this world must I been an irksome flea
Abruptly I did have my thought of last
The last thing crossed my mind was that of brass
Eric, interesting contrast set up between the nickel and brass! And I'm guessing both of those are referencing bigger ideas, which means you effectively employed metonymy-- using a part of something to represent the whole. Cool!
ReplyDeleteI'm just rereading this-- I googled "nineteen leven" and found out a nineteen-eleven is a type of pistol. And the barrel is touching the speaker's lips-- so it sounds like the speaker is contemplating suicide...? That would be consistent with the heartbreak expressed in the second quatrain. Are bullets made of brass? Is that what the ending couplet refers to? Being married to a trombone player, my first thought was that the speaker decided to find solace by playing his brass instrument, but that's probably an overly optimistic conclusion. This seems like a very sad poem.
The meter sometimes lost the iambic rhythm and sometimes clauses weren't fully formed, but I loved the intentional imagery and metonymy.
One last thought-- if this was written as anything other than hypothetical-- just know how loved you are.
13/15
Eric....I don't even know what to say. I really liked how you used only parts of the object to reveal your true meaning. You made the ideas in your quatrains sound so...real. I just wanted to say that hypothetical or not, you represented your topic well...sorry, I really can't find words...but I just wanted to say that I liked your piece...so yeah..
ReplyDeleteEric, I love the vague descriptions representing the whole. It's such a chilling effect to read late at night. No idea you had this in you! Great stuff
ReplyDeleteEric I love this type of poam. I love the fact that this can be taken anyway. It can talk about the problem with suicides in our society. The images is vivid I can almost see onto the mind of an extremely depressed person. I know some of our blogs are ment to be personal about ourselves. I really hope this was not personal. Great job addressing am evident problem.
ReplyDeleteDude.... goosebumps at the end. Throughout the sonnet is a consistently powerful and overbearing despairing tone. Uggghh but that last line is so creative. At first I was like, "obviously the last thing he thinks about is the barrel against him" but then I was like "wait the barrel's made of nickel" and THEN... THEN I was like ".......the bullet..... WAHHHHHHH" So the bullet is the last thing to "cross" his mind. Great way to end the poem. I wonder if in the second line, when you said his lips had never tasted nickel, you mean to say that suicide has never been a consideration for the speaker. Therefore this breakup most have been pretty harsh. Awesome job
ReplyDelete